


Colours of Love

by Amestris



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Hurt, Loneliness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, This is miserable?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-19 00:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12399774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amestris/pseuds/Amestris
Summary: AU where the positive feelings people have for other people manifest in swoopy light shows, stealth is difficult, Tharkay has lots, then he has none





	1. 1

Tharkay is accustomed to the stillness around him, the lack of light where those around him are beacon of brightness. The ties that bind him are few and far between. 

 

When he had been a child, he had basked in the sheet of orange that swooped around him, his mother’s love endless and effusive, curving and joyous as it peaked and waned in smooth high tides. He was blessed he knew, by the sweeping lines of gold and orange that drew around him to his family, the softer golden-orange hum of his grandparents, sweet like the laughing kisses of his mother’s sister, warm like the solid heat of his uncle's’ arms drawing him close in the evenings.

 

Hidden beneath his family’s bold, unafraid love, a secret of his own, was a rope of hard burnished orange. As long as he had been aware of it, it had remained unchanged, an uncompromising, unbreakable chain that trailed to his father, a proof of love as bold as his mother’s. It was a quiet bond, noteworthy for its strength rather than its colour an anchor through the tumultuous adventures of a well indulged child.

 

He had always known that others were not so well gifted, that their lives did not overflow with the laughter and affection he was granted without thought or care. The trails of light that curled around him, sometimes fully covered him, were a blessing he carried with him under the harsh burn of the sun, under the cold fingers of snow.

 

He could not have imagined his world without them, but the world cared not for the contentment of a naive Nepalese boy.

  
  
  


When he was 7, he had learned sorrow. A sorrow that would follow him further into the future than his child’s mind could have imagined. He had been laid bare and exposed by the loss of his mother, the desperate, cushioning love of his family had amounted to nothing in the face of the absence of his mother’s orange, sometimes so recklessly fierce it would blind him. Afterwards he had been blinded by his grief, as his family had cried into his hair and clung to his form he had seen only what was not there. When the fog had lifted he was alone on a ship and it was much too late. He had clung then to his father’s leg, watching the waves of grey crash down, listening to the ocean lift its voice in a roar. When his father’s hand had dropped to rest on the back of his neck, the large palm covering almost half his head he’d felt some level of solidity take root again. Despite the sloping decks and the cold spray of water on his face, his father’s hand had been hot and protective, the rope of orange around his chest as strong as the day he had been born.

  
  


England was strange. 

His father had led him through his homeland with a hand on his head and a look of such aggravation on his face that Tenzing had felt an unassailable solidarity between them. He had looked on the rolling green and built up grey and black of England with something approaching awe tinged heavy with fear. His father had looked only regretful, filling their travelling days with a picture of an alien future, of cousins unknown, of secret languages made public, of rules of nonsense and decorum.

 

Scotland was horrible.

The estate was like nothing he had ever seen before and nothing he ever wanted to see again. This home they had come to was full already with his father’s relations, strange and cold and unfriendly. Their faces were pinched, with judging eyes and unkind mouths but more than that, they were strangely colourless, the trails that bound them together were thin and faint, grey like the skies, grey like the walls. He stood out beyond the colour of his skin, the shape of his features; the sweeping lines of sun and saffron that wisped around him, trailing far off to the South East, no less bold for the distance were just as strange and alien to his new family. 

 

His father seemed to fight incessantly with his brothers, it was unseemly, embarrassing for them to walk around with the binds of their love so open for any to see. He remembered peeking through a cupboard in his father’s study as he had shaken his head at one of his uncle's while gesturing absently at Tenzing’s wild marigold ducking and peaking around him, face pitying, and then with an absent fond smile ‘I can’t do anything about it. Literally. There is literally nothing I can do.’ When he looks back on it, it warms him. At the time he hadn’t understood. 

He‘d slipped out after his uncle had left and settled into his father’s lap, followed his father’s fingers trailing over the map in front of them with his own, both of their hands heading to a home they would not see again. He had drawn his father’s attention down to his chest, gently plucking at the various fading lines of light around him, naming each one as he went. 

‘ _ Bajai’ _ , he had brushed against the softer line from his grandmother, remembering the scratchy sweetness of her singing voice and the line had lit up suddenly brighter and wider, moving around him in a dizzying swirl while a corresponding swoop wrapped around his father. He had shared a shocked moment of uplit joy in the gloom of the room before his father’s face had crumpled and he’d dragged him closer, pressing Tenzing’s face into his chest, where he fell asleep to the heavy beat of his father’s heart.

His father had carried him to his own bed that night, tucking him close and warm as if he were back home with his heart between Kesar and Aadesh. The morning had brought a painful conversation about how the fading lines would soon be replaced by lines from his newly discovered family. 

 

The fading lines would never be replaced by his newly discovered aunts and uncles and cousins, the children disliked him and the adults had seemed to actively loathe him.    
  


He had always been precocious and though the joyous child had been replaced with a solemn young boy, he had no shortage of the small silvery lines of concern and affection that appeared and disappeared like dust on the wind. He had been favoured by tutors and servants, partly through his own behaviour and partly as a result of the thoughtlessly cruel behaviour of his family. Housemaids had kissed his cheeks and helped him hide his books, footmen had patted him on the head and warned him off locations where he might encounter a particularly mean relation, the kitchen staff had fed him and perhaps most usefully taught him to cook. In his avoidance of his family, he had learned from the gardeners, the farmhands, the stablemen, the kennelmaster and visiting huntsmen and falconers. He had learned to see, to untangle the waves of light that wound around and between people. That was when he had learned that other people  _ couldn’t _ see the lines between, the lines that tied people together. As a child it had seemed a pointless gift.

 

His father had combed through his hair with his hands as he retold his lessons in the evening, thoughtlessly tactile and immeasurably proud. His father was his shield against the world, more clever, more wealthy, more powerful than anyone else in his little sphere.

 


	2. 2

And then his father had decided to send him to school.  

 

They had argued about it, he didn’t want to go, he hated England, he was clever enough, they would hate him there, he would learn nothing, he would be alone.

“ _Tenzing_ ” he had jerked to attention at that, his father had never called him that; after he’d stopped responding to George, he had called him Son, sometimes _chorra_ when he was feeling nostalgic. He had lost the argument of course, he was deserving, he would prove to the narrow-minded world, he would receive no less than any other man of his house, he would grow up with all the benefits derived from his station.

 

School had forged him. He was honed at the hands of quintessential English Gentlemen, impeccably dressed, well spoken, proud, aloof and abuzz with bigotry and prejudice. He’d been treated across the spectrum of grudging respect to outright hostility by his teachers and with indifference or animosity by his classmates. He learned to fight without restraint, the fear of death burned into him again and again from the first time he had been dragged from his bed in the night. He learned to listen out for the slightest of noises out of place. He learned to swim after only an expected surge of humanity from an older boy saved him from drowning. He learned Classics, Latin, Greek, Arithmetic and pointless nonsense in lessons. He learned his place in the pecking order at dinner. He learned futility. He relearned loss when after two months of unrelenting misery the two quiet lines of his grandparent’s love flamed out brighter than ever before and then disappeared completely within a week.

 

Sometimes as he would lay in bed, cold and alone, he would touch the coil of light around his chest and swear that it was the only barrier he had against freezing to death.

 

The first summer he returned to Scotland, he had thought to hold his silence, the sting of his father’s betrayal freshly renewed by every lesson he had learned. He had held still, unmoving under the weight of his father’s arms still so strong and comforting, initially full of his own indignation, subsequently full of choking tears that held his throat hostage.

When his father stepped away he had promptly realised how stupid trying to hold on to his anger had been because the air between them fair glowed with his reckless feelings, orange licking up and down in an increasingly frenetic flow. This close, he could see where his father’s light melded with his own between them, light sweeping into a symbol of infinity holding them together. Tight and controlled orange as it wrapped around him and then flaring into sunset-tinged wildness as it crossed itself in front of him and wrapped around his father.

His father smiled ruefully down at him, gently touching the light now almost fully covering his chest.

“This disappeared a few times son, gave me quite the scare.”

He had cried then, the last eight months of fear and misery surging through him in an unstoppable wave. He didn’t really remember much beyond the storm of tears, his father hushing him, stroking his hair, crooning Bajai’s lullaby as he picked him up as if he were no more than a child and taking him into the quiet privacy of his study.

 

For the first time at his father’s estate, he had felt at home, safe like he never was at school, surrounded by familiar things, familiar people. He would be invited to meet his father’s friends, all far more varied and interesting than any people he had met before. Not one of them had looked at him askew for his mixed heritage and his heart lifted for it. The staff and tenants had treated him like a long lost favoured nephew, commenting on how tall he had become, how clever he was, how good he was.

The end of summer had brought his departure, his father had clutched him close in the hallway and refused to let him go.

“Son, you won’t go. You’ll stay with me.”

He had wanted to, he hadn’t told his father about it, but death by misdemeanour loomed ever present in his mind’s eyes at the thought of school. He still had lessons to learn however and he had lied as artfully as he’d learned how and left his father behind to return once more to Hell.

 

James had appeared in his 15th year, transferred in from some other school and he had been a revelation of joy. He cared not for the social mores that had dominated Tenzing’s life as soon as he had reached ‘civilisation’, he slipped into the cavernous space that surrounded him and filled it with a companionship that Tenzing had never known to miss.

James had taught him betrayal, taught him the double-sided sword of love. James had looked him in the face and scraped a knife across his chest. There had been others there, but James had stood there, the swirl of his bright yellow still wrapping around Tenzing’s form as unconsciousness had slammed into him.

 

He had woken to a dark silent room, the shape of his father’s familiar form somewhere in the shadows. He hadn’t remained awake for long. The following memories were all tinged with pain and despair, his father’s ravaged face, his own protesting body as he had slid in and out of consciousness.

“Your friend James has been by a few times asking after you,” his father had said one day, stroking a hand through his hair.

“No” he had shaken his head in denial as well, “No, he did this, he wasn’t, he’s not-”

He had looked down then and alongside the glittering silver from the nurses and his father’s unmoving band, was the now familiar curve of James’ buttercup, hectic but undeniable. To say he had reacted poorly would be something of an understatement. He had swiped through the light as if to remove it and of course it had reformed, an unfathomable panic had hit him as he brushed it aside again more forcefully. His body had protested fiercely at his aggressive movement and peripherally he could see his father’s terrified face. He’d been yelling, his voice harsh and hoarse, _get it off me, get it off, get it off_. He’d felt violated like never before, carrying James’ light after everything James had done to him. He’d managed to knock himself out with a crack of his head on the wall, his father’s hands had wrapped around his upper arms too late to prevent injury.

 

The next time he awoke, his eyes had been bound shut and his wrist was pinned to the bed by a warm hand. He hadn’t been able to find words, whether through injury or through his own aching heart he didn’t know. He’d shifted his fingers slightly and his father had changed the grip on his arm to a butterfly touch and then started talking to him in a low rumble, soothing and rhythmic and calming.

 

In those days of darkness the things he had learned from his father were far more useful than anything he had ever learned at school. His father had called James to his bedside, holding his hand firm and still as Tenzing had pretended to be asleep, and then proceeded to extract any number of details both useful and useless with his warm, soothing voice and open, trustworthy manner. His father’s grip had hardened when the mastermind of the attack had been revealed to be his cousin, but Tenzing was unable to muster any surprise at the possibility of it. He had felt tired and drained and _tired_ , like he would happily sleep forever and never have awaken to the darkness of his life again.

 

But his father had held tight, had filled the quiet room with a scratching pen and murmured plans of cold, strategic destruction. By the time the bandage was removed from his eyes, the school was in disarray with Masters and tutors resigning or leaving abruptly in the night and the boys who had left him broken and scarred in the village square sent home in shame and disgrace for reasons both shocking and untrue.

 

His father had looked at him as he opened his eyes for the first time in weeks and together their eyes had dropped to the thin line of James’ yellow, still swooping loosely around him.

“I could get rid of it for you.”

Tenzing had thought about it then, the fragility of a life that wasn’t his own, but even as he wavered, he had known that the answer would always be no.

 

They had gone home in an endless journey, trailing ever Northward and while Tenzing had found himself in a pensieve peace, healing and strengthening. His lesson in human nature burned hard into his skin and soul, his father had been haunted and restless. He had looked at Tenzing anew, rediscovered his vulnerability, seen his alien nature from the outside, how he had never fit, how he never could.

 

Tenzing had left school burnished and strong and hardened. His pain and fear nothing but a fading memory. His father had never recovered.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is short!

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a WIP, because I keep adding to the end :/
> 
> Sorry for the strange tensing? It wasn't meant to have so much of this weird reminiscing but it kept growing and getting more unwieldy until it was too late.
> 
> Umm so yeah, kudos is great, but would really love a chat if anyone has a moment?  
> https://amestrisstruggles.tumblr.com


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